24 Problems All Curly-Haired Women Have

Go ahead, run your hand through it. If you think it's really ~*~sexXxXxxXy~*~ to lose a hand.

1. Your hair takes a full workday to dry after a morning shower, and you look like a wet sheepdog who files invoices. Your coworkers are like, "What a talented sheepdog! It can use Microsoft Excel and everything!"

2. When you're trying to blow-dry your hair and you can't find the diffuser (i.e. the attachment that makes you not look like a human Christmas tree). I am convinced that lost diffusers end up on Diffuser Island, a remote paradise where diffusers go just to fuck with us.

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3. On Days 2–4 after you wash your hair, it's as awesome as Julia Roberts's in My Best Friend's Wedding, but that is a very narrow window. On Day 1, you look like Shirley Temple. Clean curls are the bounciest, tightest, and frankly, least-flattering (for some of us) iteration possible.

4. On Day 5, you look like a troll who sleeps under a bridge. Not even dry shampoo can save you now. You have to take a spritz bottle of water and do your best ... in other words, another 20 minutes of your morning routine.

5. Your natural hair on a good day looks like every pre-makeover hairstyle in a romantic comedy.

Or that guy from Workaholics.

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5. The various opinions on how often to wash your hair are confusing. Some hairstylists say you should only use shampoo once a week. Others say a few times a day. Straight-haired people give you side-eye when you mention you don't wash your hair as often as they do. (Go to hell.) What to do?!

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6. To go sulfate-free or to stay with regular shampoo? My guess is the majority of straight-haired women don't even know what sulfate-free shampoo is.

7. Topknots take more work than they should; otherwise they look weird. There is a fine line between "high-fashion topknot" and "I forgot to take my hair down from this awkward bun I do before washing my face."

8. You can't wash your hair and then sleep on it. Unless "stuck your head in an electrical socket" is a prominent model-hairstyle in your Delia*s catalogue. (It's not.)

9. The curly-hair specialty products that actually make your hair sane are three times more expensive than regular products. And you either use them up immediately or use them once, realize they're not effective, and throw them under the sink where you keep your failed-products graveyard.

10. You go to a friend's house and forget your hair accoutrements, and you are totally fucked. Sorry, Sleek-Haired Perfect Unicorn Friend, I can't use your usual drugstore hair products. Why? Because I'll end up looking like Howard Stern, that's why.

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11. People will refer to your "fro" as if that's appropriate. Guys. We have to be best friends before — if ever — you call my hair a "Jew 'fro" and I manage to abstain from smacking you upside the head. Not OK.

12. You have to be super-careful about who you go to for cuts. Otherwise you end up with the patented triangle shape. Not cute.

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13. Layers grow out weird. At the time, they thin your hair out in a good way, but a few months later, you've got two layers that are very clearly defined and very different lengths. Try braiding that shit. Go ahead. Try it. I did it this morning, and now I have to go to therapy.

14. You have, like, three hairstyle options. You know those awesome hair tutorials on sites like ours? Yeah. Not really possible for us curly-haired women to do about 90 percent of the time. Step 1 is always, "Brush it." Yeah, not gonna happen.

15. Speaking of those tutorials, they always call wavy hair "curly." It's not "Three Awesome Workplace Styles for Curly Hair" if it's a model with pin-straight hair that you loosely curled, like, half of. I wasn't born yesterday.

16. Girls with easy, beautiful waves whose hair is perfectly straight on top are always trying to commiserate. "Oh my god, my hair is sooooo crazy when it's natural." And one day they don't have time to flat-iron it and it's actually like:

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And you're like:

17. People assume you're a certain kind of person when you have curly hair. A free spirit who plays the guitar in coffee shops and wears long, dangly dream-catcher earrings. A vegan. I am not a free spirit, I am VERY trapped. And I also eat meat, thanks.

18. That mixed feeling you have when people compliment you on your temporarily straightened hair. You say, "Thanks!" You think, Does this mean I look better with straight hair? I do feel more confident this way but is that just because straight hair is preferred by society? Should I cave in and straighten it all the time? Do people like me better when I'm not myself???

19. Every time you have an important event, you obsess over the above. First date? Job interview? Do you straighten it and then roll up to the second date/follow-up interview curly? Does it even matter to anyone but you?

20. Guys try to run their fingers through your hair and immediately get caught in tangles. Uh, #BornThisWay?

21. You wake up the next morning and don't look subtly sex-disheveled and instantly adorable. Morning-after drunk sex hair for curly-haired women is not good. You better sneak into his bathroom before he gets up and wonders where the cute girl went, and how the stray caribou found its way into the bed.

22. You're the only woman who leaves her hair naturally curly at work, and it's lonely. :|

23. It took you about 10 extra years to actually figure out how to style it. Burn all those pictures from middle school.

24. It takes forever for it to look like it's long. Sure, it looks short, but go ahead, stretch it out. Practically down to your butt, right?

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